The construction of life-like and realistic manikins, e.g., taxidermy mounts, dolls, stuffed animals, clothing mannequins, artistic sculptures, etc., can be extremely difficult. Every body part must be accurately depicted for the manikin to be acceptable. Yet accurately depicting body parts often requires a high degree of technical expertise in both design and manufacturing.
One area of unique difficulty is artificial glass eyes and the methods of manufacturing the eyes. Artificial glass eye construction requires significant artistic skill, time, anatomical knowledge, and experience to create realistic artificial eyes. Typical artificial glass eyes, such as taxidermic and doll eyes, have a generally hemispherical or aspherical outer surface. The eyes are usually hollow having a convex outer surface and a flat or concave inner surface or back. Markings are typically placed on the concave back of the eye blank to simulate the elements of a real animal or human eye or a fanciful eye. A realistic artificial eye includes the common visual eye elements for each particular application, e.g., type of animal, type of doll, teddy bear etc. For example, a typical artificial eye contains sclerotic capsule or base, pupil, iris, and cornea elements. Thus, the artificial eye design and manufacturing process requires that when assembled, the combined components create a realistic artificial eye, and that the elements are able to efficiently and correctly form together during manufacturing or production.
The design and manufacture of realistic artificial eyes is historically slow and tedious, and requires highly trained artists and technicians. Artificial glass eye construction involves a number of interrelated factors, including: the ability to produce a variety of designs, the materials used, the manufacturing processes and the level of skill required to produce anatomically realistic eyes. Accordingly, along with the artistic need to depict realistic eyes, these factors must all be considered in the design of artificial eyes. As described below, current artificial glass eye construction is technically complicated and expensive.
One type of artificial eye construction, known as lampworking, comprises the use of clear or colored glass rods, which are softened in a flame, shaped into an eyepiece with hand molds, and then allowed to cool. In a second step, a skilled artist, using vitreous glass enamels, paints the pupil and iris color by hand onto the back of the eyepiece. The eyepiece is then fired to fuse the color to the glass (see, e.g., U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,637,159 and 5,735,895). Because this process is mostly done by hand, this type of artificial eye construction requires an extremely high level of skilled labor to produce anatomically correct shapes and aesthetically pleasing designs. Additionally, because the color is applied to each eye individually by hand, it is difficult to maintain uniformity in the designs.
Another type of artificial eye construction, clear glass rods are heated and softened and pressed into molds to create a clear glass shell eyepiece. After cooling, the excess material of the rod, exposed outside of the mold, is trimmed and the edges ground to produce a clean shell. The shell is then decorated by hand to depict a specific eye design. Again, this type of artificial eye construction comprises many slow and tedious finishing and decorating steps, and requires a high level of technical expertise.
A more recent type of artificial glass eye construction uses glass plates or disks (see, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 4,822,397). The glass sheets are printed with the markings and coloring for one or more eye images. The glass plates are then positioned over steel trays, such that the printed eye images are placed over openings in the trays. The openings are of specific sizes for various eye designs. The glass plates are then heated to the softening point of the glass. The heated glass sags through the openings to form the eye shapes with the pre-printed image. Once the glass has cooled, the excess material is trimmed away with cutting and grinding. Because the glass sheets are flat, silk screen printing or decals may be used to create the markings and colorings for the eye images. Consequently, this type of artificial eye construction eliminates the hand painting of the other eye construction methods, thus decreasing the need for highly skilled painters. Additionally, the ability to produce numerous eyes at the same time, and the easier method of shaping the eye blanks, decreases costs and increases the speed of production. However, because the coloring relies on correctly located silk screening or decals and because the glass is merely sagging into an opening, this type of artificial glass eye may not consistently provide anatomically precise eyes, resulting in a great deal of waste.
Thus, until the present invention, there has remained an unmet need in the art for an artificial eye construction method and artificial eye that provides a more precisely colored, polished and anatomically realistic eye without the need for highly trained artists and technicians. In addition, it is desirable that the artificial eye construction provides a consistent product, without increasing costs or production times.